Erik Kingston, PCED’s Post

Homelessness is a social, wage, and housing policy issue. It's easier to become homeless in America today than anytime since the Great Depression. In many cases, those being displaced from housing today represent what we've always considered the 'middle class.' When rental housing changes ownership, rents can increase overnight by anywhere from 20% to over 80%; wages don't keep pace. Seniors or people with disabilities on fixed incomes can't afford those increases, and neither can most essential workers. Domestic violence is another destabilizing force. If ending homelessness is the desired outcome: —invest in housing density and diversity, and distribute that housing across communities and neighborhoods to create access to opportunity and community assets; —Invest in reliable transit to reduce transportation, parking and pollution costs; —Invest in energy efficiency to reduce the costs to heat and cool homes; —Invest in reliable and quality child care, elder care and home health care; —Invest in early childhood education; —Invest in health and wellness care for all; —Invest in domestic violence prevention; and —Invest in civic health and engagement All of these investments taken together return positive and popular dividends on a generational scale. They yield better outcomes for taxpayers and communities than investing in prisons—and expanding reasons to fill them with people struggling in the current housing crisis.